Working and Living Together: Realities of Life for Africans in Asia and Asian in Africa.
Thousands of Africans and Asians live on the other’s continent. In some cases there is talk of new waves of migration and the replacement of Europe as number one destination. But what can be said about the experiences of these people and what do they mean for the African-Asian perspectives?
Katy Lam from the University of Lausanne presents some surprising results regarding the real life experiences of Chinese merchants in Ghana and Benin. Contrary to the widely assumed cliché of the successful Chinese in Africa the majority of these merchants give up their enterprises due to official and public adverseness. Heidi Østbø Haugen from the University of Oslo examines African students in China whose decision to study in China is based on a large variety of different reasons. Many of these students are relatively quickly disappointed with the Chinese tertiary education system and turn to exclusively commercial activities – with consequences for the African-Chinese relations on many different levels.
Lectures by Katy Lam, University Lausanne and Heidi Østbø Haugen, University of Oslo
Chaired by Jun.Prof. Dr. Sandra Khor Manickam, Goethe University